How I Made: The Four Seasons

1. Rough composite

The first step to creating this complex image was to create a rough comp to get a complete vision of the project. In this case, I used the brush tool and the images of the cars.

2. Image choice

I used mainly images from stock photos, so it was very important to do a preview of them to see how they could fit in the project. After choosing the right images, I started cleaning and cutting them.

3. Composition

With all the images cut the way I needed, I started the assembling step of the project, working on the background of the scene and always looking back at the rough comp to guide me.

4. The scenery, part I

This was the most important step of the project, where I had to integrate each car into its respective environment. For this, I used brushes, masks, paths and other images.

5. The scenery, part II

The second part was defining the right lighting for each environment to integrate the whole image. And to achieve this, I used adjustments such as Black & White and Gradient Map.

6. Shadow and light

The second part was defining the right lighting for each environment to integrate the whole image. And to achieve this, I used adjustments such as Black & White and Gradient Map.

7. Lens flare

One of the things I most like to do is add a Lens Flare over a black layer on Screen blend mode to give the image a special effect. I use this filter every time I need to give more realism to the image.

8. HDR toning

Since I worked with stock images, I recovered the textures at the end of the process. The method I used was HDR Toning with a duplicated image. After that, I created a layer with Soft Light.